


Beneath the Skin

by Skalidra



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: But in a sex way, M/M, Masochism, Masturbation, One-Sided Relationship, Scars, Self-Harm, The Relationship is there but not the point
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-16
Updated: 2017-01-16
Packaged: 2018-09-17 22:08:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9348548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skalidra/pseuds/Skalidra
Summary: Shiro has learned, since he fell into life with the other Paladins, that he's a pretty good actor. But as far as he's concerned that's good, because not even Lance, who he shares a bed with whenever he's wanted, has any idea of just how warped he really is. Like the fact that the only thing that gets him off anymore is his scattered memories of the arena, andpain.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to day 4 of Dark Voltron Week! Today's prompts were 'Demons and Monsters/Scars'. So, this is like... warped!Shiro, basically. The Shiro/Lance is there at the start, there is sex between them, but it's not really the point of the story so much as a lead up to the actual point. Have fun!

It's like a service to the team, is how Shiro rationalizes it. Lance wants this, and it is good, he's sure of that much even if he's not sure he wants it in quite the same way. Lance is more invested than he is, but he's good at acting, good at smiling and giving people what they want without them knowing that he isn't really interested. That could be complicated later, but it's better this way. He's not fit for a real relationship, even though the rest of the Paladins haven't figured that out yet.

He knows, deep in his bones, that he's damaged beyond any kind of repair. The rest of the team can see the cracks, but they don't know how deep it goes, or how much the innermost bits of him are still in shattered pieces, dark and warped in ways they probably couldn't understand. He's still trying to figure out what he is just by himself; how could anyone else understand what he's become when he isn't even sure yet?

What he does know, is there are reactions programmed into his body that weren't before there. He knows that he can smile at Lance and not mean it, but get a blush and an awed look anyways. He knows his hands are precise and practiced at stripping clothing from willing skin, though the Garrison never left him enough time to actually pick up skills like that. He knows that despite how good Lance looks — lean and flushed and begging with words and body both under his touch — he never feels more than a low ache of desire in his gut, and he knows that despite that lack of desire he still rises quickly to attention, and stays that way.

His hands know what to do without his mind being actively engaged, working Lance open and bringing him twice to the brink before turning him on his stomach and sliding inside. Lance is loud and he's quiet in comparison, busying his mouth along the line of Lance's slimmer shoulders to explain away the lack. It feels good enough, but he knows from experience that he is more like a machine than a man in this aspect. He can do this for hours and never come any higher than that low ache; like it's just a reminder that he's supposed to be getting off on this.

(He wonders, as his hips work and Lance writhes beneath him, exactly what was done to him to make him like this. He's wondered before; he doesn't have an answer yet.)

Lance claws the bed, pushing back against how Shiro is blanketed over him, feeling so very large and dangerous over the smaller, slimmer body. He won't hurt Lance, he's not that far gone, but the potential is there and _that_ makes his heart speed up just a little where the rest fails to. He shuts his eyes, presses a kiss to the base of Lance's neck, and shuts away the intrusive thought.

He goes a little faster, a little deeper, when Lance begs him to, as he reads all the little nonverbal cues that he can't help picking up on. Lance is close now; not much longer until this is done. (There is a part of him that's glad and _happy_ to do this. This is useful, this is good. He can still bring pleasure to others even though he's too shattered to receive it. He can still be important to his partners.)

He slides his real hand up Lance's side and then around his chest, pinning him between his arm and chest as he finds the raised peaks of Lance's nipples and traces his fingers around them. He knows how to play Lance's reactions, it didn't take him long to figure out exactly what Lance enjoys, and he exploits that as well as he can. It's one of the things he's best at, now.

It doesn't take much longer for Lance to be crying out beneath him, moving against him and drawing tight. He shortens his thrusts in reaction, continuing to move to draw Lance's release out but making them smoother, gentler. He knows how to slow, reads the cues of Lance's movements to draw to a halt and wrap Lance in his arms. Lance is gasping, loose and boneless in his arms, as he slowly shifts them both to lie down.

It takes him a moment to pull just far enough away to slip out, though he keeps Lance held close to him, back to his chest as they lie across the bed. Lance's breathing slowly calms, turns deeper, and he very slowly extricates himself from the bed. Lance stirs, but doesn't actually give more than a sleepy mumble that sounds half-protesting. Carefully, Shiro draws enough of his clothing back on to be presentable in the corridors, and then leans over Lance and pulls the covers of the bed up and over his shoulders to tuck the younger man in.

Lance yawns, snuggles deeper into the bed, and Shiro lets his fingers slide gently through Lance's hair before he turns away. The door only gives a soft hiss as he leaves, and it's late so the corridors are empty as he heads for his own room. If any of the other Paladins are still awake, they're not here.

He locks the door of his room behind himself, and leans against it for a moment. He's still hard, still has that ache in the pit of his stomach keeping him that way. Experience tells him that it will linger for at least an hour, if he doesn't take care of it. (He's the only one that can take care of it.)

He strips off his clothing with easy efficiency, before he presses his back into a corner and lowers his flesh hand to wrap around the weight of his cock. It's still slick with the remains of the lube, which makes it easy to tug at it, hard enough to ache almost like his gut does.

His Galra hand he lifts, and follows its path with his gaze as he presses his fingers into a roughly round, circular scar just above his right hip. The memory comes sharp and vivid, the rush of breath in his ears as a weapon very spear-like pins him to the ground, the thin alien sneering down at him as it _twists_ into his side. His heart picks up, body rippling in remembered pain but bringing with it a twist of harder, truer _want_ in his gut.

Up, to a long slash along his ribs on the right side, and he remembers the flash of the blade, remembers the color of the blood against his skin and costume. (Remembers how the medics burnt the edges together later as he shook; slipshod care for a slave that didn't matter.) His memory goes from there and he can almost hear the roar of the crowd in his ears, taste the dirt between his teeth and feel the _thrum_ of adrenaline in his veins, see the expression on his opponent’s face as he _sliced it apart_.

He groans, sliding his palm up over his chest, the laugh coming easily like so few things do these days, dark and hungry with remembered passion. He scrapes his fingers over scars on the way up, the memories as clear as though they were branded onto his mind; blood and death and pain and _victory_. The bright slices of blades, the lower aches of weapons that ripped instead, the _burn_ of blasters or energy weapons.

Two matching, circular scars above his left pectoral where he was shocked hard enough by some sort of taser to slam him into a wall. He'd been laid out for two weeks afterwards on medical order, his heart too strained to take more action until it had time to recover. But he'd _killed_ her. Turned the taser on her and held it until something inside her _popped_ with the strain and she went limp apart from the spastic flail of dead limbs. He remembers nearly going _mad_ with the inability to fight on his enforced downtime.

That enjoyment, the clear bloodlust, is so simple. So easy.

He kills, and he is rewarded. He hurts, and it's _good_. Wires twisted around somewhere in his brain, either deliberately or as his own way to survive without going insane, that turned those arena fights into something bestial and perfect. Something he still _craves_. Pitting his skill against an opponent, until one of them is dead and bleeding against the ground, is as pure an experience as he's ever felt. Pain as clear a consequence as victory is a reward, but even that he remembers enjoying.

He can remember the way his heart _raced_ whenever he was wounded, and his opponent proved good enough to be a challenge. Instinct; crushing a skull in his Galra-given arm and laughing at the victory, grinning up at crowd and podium alike and wanting _more_. Willing and wanting to tear any enemy apart if it meant being allowed to be free and _alive_. He still _wants_ that, deeper than anything else written in his bones. His desire to have all his memories back, or to reach the same level of friendship with Keith they shared before all this, is nothing in comparison to the yawning maw of hunger for the arena.

It made him a beast, it made him a monster, and he _wants it back_.

His metal fingers slide higher, and he digs them into a familiar scar over his left shoulder. A ring that forms a clear bite mark, if you look at it. He digs in hard enough his shoulder aches, tilting his head back against the wall as he moans and remembers the burning pain of teeth slicing down into his skin, holding him still. Quiet, for once, with the metal of a cell beneath his knees instead of the rough dirt of the arena. Fur and armor brushing his skin as he was roughly, viciously reminded of his place.

Clawed hands hard against his hips, leaving scratches that (sadly) never scarred, but he gets the faint memory echo of them anyway, his hips rocking to chase the feeling. His teeth dig into his own lip, too blunt to hurt like he wants it to. He rubs back against the wall instead, feeling the drag of the long stripes carved down his back in straight lines, another gift from the Galra. He remembers the one that bit him, and he remembers the slice of those claws into his back but not who gave them to him.

He knows there were others. He knows some he was willing for, the blood and dirt from the arena still fresh on his skin and his cock already hard from the fight. He knows he was less interested in others but was given anyway (and perhaps that's where his automatic response comes from). He doesn't remember their faces though; he knows they were Galra, but the faces stay stubbornly blank no matter how his mind claws for them.

He wants that too.

The memory of being held or tied down, of being rendered helpless by stronger limbs and then _taken_ as though he were nothing more than the beast of the arena, calls to him as deeply in his bones as the desire to return to that arena. He wants to feel teeth in his skin again, wants to be made to bleed and endure beneath the weight of someone larger and stronger than he is. He wants to be pushed far enough to become that mindless, instinct-driven animal again.

It isn't the same, but he tilts his head to the side and bites down into his own shoulder. It's not a good angle, and he can't get a great grip, but it's enough to hurt in a more satisfying way than biting his lower lip. His cock throbs, and he drops his Galra hand down his chest again, palming his cock for a brief moment before sliding his fingers down beneath it to grip at his own balls. The feeling of the metal alone makes him arch a bit and scrape his teeth harder against his shoulder, even before he squeezes.

Lighter at first, enough to ache and to make his cock jerk in the grip of his other hand. Then harder, as the coil in his gut draws tight. It _hurts_ ; prickles of cold pain that make his thighs tremble, and he moans into his shoulder before rolling his head back against the wall. It only takes another moment, aided by the fantasy of sharp teeth closing down on his bared throat, before he's coming up and onto his stomach. He eases the grip, and the returning rush of blood makes him gasp and shudder, his eyes rolling back as his cock gives a last jerk at the sensation.

He keeps his hands down there as he breathes, cradling the ache and letting himself slowly come back down. He can't do this all the time; it's too obvious. Even now he can feel the bruises that will form on his shoulder, not to mention the tender ache of his balls. Lance may be awed just to be in a bed with him, but if he shows up with bruised balls more than once or twice even Lance will realize something is wrong with him.

More than Lance already knows, anyway. He's brushed aside the questions about the fact that he doesn't come, and Lance has taken his excuses at face value for now. He doesn't want to have to excuse anything else; he can only get away with so much before they start to realize how deeply warped he is.

His own pleasure comes at the cost of bruises and blood, instinct and adrenaline, and he doesn't want to subject any of the other Paladins to that knowledge. Let them think he's just a little broken.

Let the monster under his skin stay out of sight.


End file.
